I noticed last week that the Sun were promoting an online 81st birthday card for the Queen, which they are extolling their readership to sign up to, and adorn with symbols of Britishness. The idea is to give the old dear a record breaking birthday greeting. I had a go, but unfortunately found I could only wish Her Madge one of the pre-set fawning greetings, not something a little more personalised to my own republican sympathies.

Amusing this week then to see that one month into the two month run, and with only 19,000 signatures to show from their 3 million readers, the Sun have now resorted to bribing people to sign it. The Ipoints online loyalty scheme are running a promotion for the card, whereby anyone who clicks through to sign gets 10 Ipoints (worth roughly 5p) in their account.

Encouraging to see this (admittedly extremely nicely executed) viral not exactly setting the web on fire, despite the best punts of one of the most influential media outlets around. Those of us of a republican bent are likely to want to ignore the papers for a while soon, when Harry succeds in pulling an Andrew and remaking his playboy tosser image by wandering about in uniform, so this is a rare opportunity for a little chuckle – Happy Birthday Ma’am!